• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 13, 2006

Football is serious business. With one senator threatening to nullify the NFL's anti-trust exemption and another who is livid that his state could be denied the chance to view a college game, the NFL Network played ball Tuesday. It will offer the channel on cable in the New York DMA for a week in December.

The network will be available free to basic-tier Time Warner and Cablevision subscribers as part of a special one-week preview the NFL Network is granting the two MSOs, with which it is in the midst of a contentious battle over carriage of the channel.

The free access, from Dec. 24-30, allows New Jersey residents the chance to view their home-state Rutgers team in the Dec. 28 collegiate Texas Bowl, which NFLN has exclusive rights to.

NFLN was hoping that pressure by consumers hungry for the Rutgers game on the two MSOs might result in a long-term carriage deal with TWC and Cablevision, the dominant MSOs in the New York area. Both have refused to pay NFLN for carriage rights that the network is asking.

Instead, pressure from Washington seems to have been the impetus for the one-week trial and Rutgers' game availability. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) wrote a letter to the NFLN asking that they make the game available.

"The fans should not be used as a bargaining chip in the dispute between the NFL Network and cable companies," Lautenberg wrote.

Meanwhile, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) has said he will introduce legislation to remove the NFL's anti-trust exemption that dates to 1961.

The NFL, which runs the NFLN, should have no desire to draw the ire of any power players on Capitol Hill.

The NFL is in some 40 million homes. Networks often give MSOs the chance to carry their feeds for free for a limited time, hoping to demonstrate or generate consumer demand.